"I had heard about this book for years. The person who put the word out, at least in lay circles, was probably Luigi Barzini, in The Italians (1964). Praising his countrymen's gift for talking with their hands, Barzini lamented that so little had been written on this subject. To his knowledge, only one person Andrea de Jorio, a Neapolitan priest had attempted a lexicon of Italian hand gestures, in an 1832 volume entitled La Mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano.... Barzini offered a little sample.... Upon reading it], you felt that if you could not get hold of de Jorio's book immediately, you would bite your elbows.... N]ot until this year was de Jorio's treatise brought out in English. The translation, the copious notes, and the long, helpful introduction... are] a source of wisdom and delight." Joan Acocella, New York Review of Books

"The twentieth century found little time for de Jorio's pioneering work until recently, when the rise of semiotics combined with an interest among art historians in gesture to invest his achievement with an importance that not even he could have imagined. Even so, this book has been more often cited than read. In view of its immense relevance to contemporary studies of gesture in the context of language and culture, it is surprising that we have had to wait so long for a translation into English. Adam Kendon has now given us the first complete, annotated rendering of de Jorio's book]. Kendon himself is an established leader in the new scientific approach to the study of gesture." G.W. Bowersock, The New Republic

Andrea de Jorio's La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano ( Gestural Expression of the Ancients in the light of Neapolitan gesturing'), was first published in Naples in 1832. It soon became famous for its descriptions and depictions of Neapolitan gestures, but it is only with the recent expansion of scholarly interest in gesture that its true importance has come to be recognized. It is the first book ever written which presents what is, in effect, an ethnographic study of gesture. Treating gesture as a culturally established communicative code, analogous to language, the book sets out to describe, with reference to an explicitly defined cultural group, the gestural expressions of ordinary people as these are used in everyday life. It also deals with numerous issues important for any semiotics of gesture, such as the question of the relationship between physical form and meaning, the problem of how to present a description of the gestural repertoire of a community in a consistent manner, the importance of context for the interpretation of gesture, how gestures may be combined, how they develop as metaphorical expressions, among many others.

Andrea de Jorio (1769-1851) was a cleric and a Canon of the Cathedral of Naples, but he was also an archaeologist and a curator at the Royal Borbonic Museum (today the National Archaeological Museum) in that city. He was an expert on Greek vases and intimately involved in all aspects of archaeology then developing in relation to the excavations at Herculaneum, Pompeii, Pozzuoli, Cuma and other sites within the district of Naples. He believed that the ordinary people of Naples had preserved in their culture the traditions of the ancient Greek founders of the city. For this reason he supposed that an understanding of contemporary gestural expression would be useful in interpreting the gestures and bodily postures depicted in the frescoes, mosaics, sculptures, and painted vases of Greco-Roman antiquity that had come to light from the excavations near Naples and elsewhere. Thus he was led to describe the gesturing of contemporary Neapolitans as fully as possible."

Gesture, or visible bodily action that is seen as intimately involved in the activity of speaking, has long fascinated scholars and laymen alike. Written by a leading authority on the subject, this long-awaited study provides a comprehensive treatment of gesture and its use in interaction, drawing on the analysis of everyday conversations to demonstrate its varied role in the construction of utterances. Adam Kendon accompanies his analyses with an extended discussion of the history of the study of gesture - a topic not dealt with in any previous publication - as well as exploring the relationship between gesture and sign language, and how the use of gesture varies according to cultural and language differences. Set to become the definitive account of the topic, Gesture will be invaluable to all those interested in human communication. Its publication marks a major development, both in semiotics and in the emerging field of gesture studies.

Originally published in 1988, this was the first book-length study ever to be published on the subject of sign language as a means of communication among Australian Aborigines. The work presented in this book filled an important gap in Aboriginal ethnography and linguistics. It also marked a major advance in the understanding of the relationship between medium of expression, code structure and communication; the processes by which spoken language may be represented in a non-vocal medium; and native speaker awareness of spoken language structure. Based on fieldwork conducted over a span of nine years, the volume presents a thorough analysis of the structure of sign languages and their relationship to spoken languages.

Gesture, or visible bodily action that is seen as intimately involved in the activity of speaking, has long fascinated scholars and laymen alike. Written by a leading authority on the subject, this long-awaited study provides a comprehensive treatment of gesture and its use in interaction, drawing on the analysis of everyday conversations to demonstrate its varied role in the construction of utterances. Adam Kendon accompanies his analyses with an extended discussion of the history of the study of gesture - a topic not dealt with in any previous publication - as well as exploring the relationship between gesture and sign language, and how the use of gesture varies according to cultural and language differences. Set to become the definitive account of the topic, Gesture will be invaluable to all those interested in human communication. Its publication marks a major development, both in semiotics and in the emerging field of gesture studies.

This book makes available five classic studies of the organisation of behaviour in face-to-face interaction. It includes Adam Kendon's well-known study of gaze-direction in interaction, his study of greetings, of the interactional functions of facial expression and of the spatial organisation of naturally occurring interaction, as recorded by means of film or videotape. They represent some of the best work undertaken within the 'natural history' tradition of interaction studies, as originally formulated in the work of Bateson, Birdwhistell and Goffman. Chapter 2, written especially for this new book, provides an historical and theoretical discussion of this tradition, and a new final chapter takes up the theme of the organisation of attention in interaction. The introduction provides details of the circumstances of how each paper came to be written. Each of the papers reprinted is accompanied by a short postscript, placing the work in the context of more recent research. Several of the papers presented in this volume, although widely referred to, have long been difficult to obtain. Their republication will be warmly welcomed by all students and teachers who are concerned with face-to-face interaction.